Creative Writing Tips

How to Improve Writing Skills

Success secrets of great authors - revealed! These creative writing tips and writing
techniques point the way to clear, concise, powerful prose.

Creative Writing Tip #1: Be Simple

Write in the simple, natural language of everyday speech. This doesn't mean that you
confine yourself to only the most basic words, but that you avoid pompous language, which
may cloud your meaning or send readers to sleep.

For example, do not say, He acquired an instrument of destruction wherewith he

decapitated the formidable foe, when you mean, With his axe he chopped off the giant's
head. Use short, familiar words rather than long, obscure ones - unless the longer word fits
your meaning more precisely.

Most good writing is simple. Read the works of authors like Jack London and Ernest
Hemingway; read the classics; read the Bible. Simple language is the strongest and most
effective.

One way to acquire good style is to study the works of great writers: not to imitate them
but to learn how simple language can be elegant, lyrical and powerful.

Read also Strunk and White's The Elements of Style: this is probably the best book available
on the subject of good style.

Creative Writing Tip #2: Be Yourself

Be yourself; be natural and sincere. Don't try to imitate another writer's style; find your
own, the style that bears the stamp of your personality.

A guarded, polished style is like a faceless mask; it's not real. Good writing resonates with
the true voice of the human author, with all of that author's warmth, wit, idiosyncrasies and
vulnerabilities.

Write as if you're speaking to a friend. Your reader should be able to hear the rhythms and
cadences of your speaking voice. Your family and friends should be able to say, “This
sounds like you.”

Creative Writing Tip #3: Be Precise

Choose words that say precisely what you mean.

Avoid trite words like nice, interesting, big. As in: We had a nice dinner; That's a big bird.
Be specific. Is it sushi, wonton or mutton curry? Is it a flamingo, an eagle or an ostrich?

Avoid vague words like walk, laugh, pour. Be creative. The boy ambled, shuffled,
swaggered; the villain scoffed, jeered, sneered; water gurgled, gushed, spurted out.

Avoid meaningless words like thing, something, somewhere. Be definite. Name the thing or
place, use concrete words that evoke clear images: click on this link for more Creative
Writing Tips on Concrete Words.

Get a thesaurus to help you. Roget's Thesaurus, for example, is an indispensable reference
tool. It comes in many versions; pick the one that best suits your needs.

A dictionary of synonyms helps too. Webster's New Dictionary of Synonyms, for example,
tells you the subtle difference between almost similar words. Or get the compact
version, The Merriam-Webster Dictionary of Synonyms and Antonyms.

Choose words that convey your message clearly to readers. Good writers look for the apt
word, the word that carries the precise denotation and the strongest, richest connotations.
For more Creative Writing Tips on Denotations and Connotations of Words, go to Good Word
Choice.

Creative Writing Tip #4: Be Concise

Concise writing is clear and strong. Write to the point, cut out unnecessary words. This
doesn't mean that you throw out all details, descriptions and figures of speech but that you
make every word pull its weight.

Cut out meaningless words and phrases like basically, personally, as a matter of fact.
As a matter of fact, today is my birthday has the same meaning as Today is my birthday.
Personally, I feel we shouldn't go near the bull: can anyone ever feel impersonally?

Don't repeat yourself. Phrases like round in shape, the reason is because, revert back, say
the same thing twice.

Use strong action verbs. Sentences with active verbs are shorter and stronger than those
with passive verbs.

Active Verb: The man bit the dog.

Passive Verb: The dog was bitten by the man.
Click here for more Creative Writing Tips on Action Verbs.

Replace roundabout phrases like in the event of, by virtue of the fact that, by the name of,
with single words that do the same job, like if, because, named.
Phrases like there is, there was, it was dilute your meaning:
There was a baby crying in the basket; it was the baby's cry that woke him up.
Cut out the verbiage: A baby was crying in the basket; the baby's cry woke him up.

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Improve your creative writing skills:

1. Let’s start with the obvious one! Read a lot! Read anything you find lying around from
old story books to newspapers. While reading this stuff, pay attention to the words being
used by the writer, use of metaphors, adjectives, characters, the plot, the conflict in the
story etc. If you come across a word you don’t understand, use a dictionary to find its
meaning and then practice using it in a sentence to gain a better understanding of that

word.
2. Find inspiration in everyday things. The world around you is full of interesting events.
Go for a walk and ask yourself questions, such as what is that person doing? What is
that dog looking at? Why are those people arguing? Write a summary of something that
is happening on the TV or a video game you just finished playing. Write about

everything and anything you see, hear, smell or feel!

3. Use writing prompts to inspire you. There are tons of resources on the internet that
can inspire you. Why not check out our writing prompts for kids, or sign-up for our

newsletter for monthly creative writing resources.

4. Criticise the work of others. When reading a book, try to identify the flaws in that story
and try to list a couple of improvements. Also note down the best parts of that story,
what did you enjoy while reading that book. This can help you understand the elements
of a great story and what to avoid when writing. If you aim to do weekly or monthly book
reviews on the books you read. Then soon you will be able to master the secrets of
great creative writing!

5. Keep a journal and write something in it every day. Even if you think your life is boring
and nothing interesting ever happens in it. You can write about your goals and
inspirations or what you did for lunch today or what happened during your maths lesson.

Anything is better than nothing!

6. Play imaginative games, such as cops and robbers or pretend to be a character from
your favourite TV show or movie. You can use our printable Red Riding Hood paper finger
puppets to role-play the story of Red Riding Hood! Link a writing activity with these
games, such as write a day in the life story about a character you are playing or a letter

to your favourite character in the story.

7. Rewrite a famous story. Sometimes creating new characters or a story plot from
scratch can be difficult. To improve your creative writing skills you can take a well-
known story, such as Cinderella or any other fairy tale and change it slightly so it has a
different ending or comes from a different character’s perspective. For example you can
write from the point of view of the ugly step sisters and how they felt when Cinderella
found her Prince Charming! Or what if Prince Charming chose the step sisters over
Cinderella, what would she have done to escape?

8. Use image prompts to inspire you, such as photographs, paintings, or a picture in a

magazine. You can even take your own pictures when on a day out or on holiday. When
you come home, for each picture you can write an interesting caption to describe it. You
can even try creating a whole story from all your holiday photos!
9. Use technology to improve creative writing. Create a story on our story creator and
publish your story online for free. Use the inspirational images and templates provided
to create awesome stories in no time. Choose from picture books, chapter books or
poems and start writing your own stories! You can even get feedback on your story and

get featured on the Imagine Forest homepage!

10. Connect writing with your interests. If you love football, why not write about your
favourite footballer? How would you feel if you met them? What would you say to them?
Why not write an imaginary letter to them? Whatever you enjoy doing, you can link any

writing activity to it!

Bonus Creative writing Tips:
 Don’t worry too much about spelling or grammar. You can fix these afterwards once you have your
story in place. Focus on developing creative story ideas and how wacky your stories can become!
 Ensure you have comfortable place to write your stories. Check out our Pinterest for suitable reading
and writing nooks! The perfect writing nook should have pens, paper, pencils, a dictionary, a
thesaurus, bookshelf and anything else that you love!
 Plan your story before writing. Check out our cool, printable storyboard template here.
 Schedule some time every day to focus on reading or writing activities.

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 7 Techniques from Creative Writing You Can Use to
Improve Your Essays
21 June, 2014

You wouldn’t have thought that essays have much in

common with creative writing.
You should also read…
 How to Improve Your English Writing Skills
 How to Write Dazzlingly Brilliant Essays
Creative writing, by definition, involves being ‘creative’: making things up, letting your imagination
run wild. Essays are about being factual and objective, communicating ideas and arguments in the
clearest way possible and attempting to enhance the reader’s knowledge, rather than their
imagination. But while the literary devices and colourful tales we associate with creative writing are
indeed out of place in an essay, these two very different kinds of writing actually have a few
similarities. Above all, they’re both meant to be read by other people, and that means that they need
to sustain the reader’s interest. So, are there any writing techniques you can borrow from creative
writing to help make your essays more interesting and original? Yes there are, and in this article,
we’re going to show you how.
1. Think about your reader
 Chances are your teacher or examiner will have a lot to read – so keep them interested.
With creative writing, as with any kind of writing, your reader is your most important consideration.
You need to know and understand whom you’re writing for if you’re to do a good job of keeping them
interested. Let’s think for a moment about the kind of person you’re writing for when you’re writing an
essay and what you need to do to write specifically for them:

 Teachers or university lecturers – they’re going to be marking your essay, so it needs to answer
the question effectively.
 They’ve set the question and they probably have a pretty good idea of how you’re going to answer
it – so be original and unpredictable; catch them by surprise with an unusual approach or structure.
 They’re going to be reading many other responses to the same question – so they may well be
bored by the time they get to yours. Keep them interested!
 They’re probably going to be pressed for time – so they won’t have time to reread badly written
passages to try to understand what you’re getting at. Keep your writing easy to read, succinct and to
the point.
What all these points boil down to is the importance of keeping your reader interested in what you
have to say. Since creative writing is all about holding the reader’s interest, there must be some
lessons to be learned from it and techniques that can be applied within the more limited style
constraints of the academic essay. We’ll now turn to what these are.

2. Three-act structure

Yves Lavandier argues that, although traditionally divided into five acts, Hamlet consists of three dramatic acts.
The three-act structure is a writing device used extensively in modern writing, including for film and
television dramas. These ‘acts’ aren’t as distinct as acts in a play, as one follows seamlessly on from
another and the audience wouldn’t consciously realise that one act had ended and another began.
The structure refers to a plotline that looks something like this:

1. Set-up – establishes the characters, how they relate to each other, and the world they inhabit.
Within this first ‘act’, a dramatic occurrence called an ‘inciting incident’ takes place (typically around
19 minutes into a film) involving the principal character. They try to deal with it, but this results in
another dramatic occurrence called a ‘turning point’. This sets the scene for the rest of the story.
2. Confrontation – the turning point in the previous ‘act’ becomes the central problem, which the main
character attempts to resolve – usually with plenty of adversity thrown their way that hampers their
efforts. In a murder mystery, for example, this act would involve the detective trying to solve the
murder. The central character – with the help of supporting characters – undergoes a journey and
develops their knowledge, skills or character to a sufficient degree to be able to overcome the
problem.
3. Resolution – the climax of the story, in which the drama reaches a peak, the problem is overcome,
and loose ends are tied up.
This structure sounds all very well for made-up stories, but what has it got to do with essay-writing?
The key similarities here are:

 The central argument of your essay is the equivalent of the main character.
 The essay equivalent of the set-up and resolution are the introduction and conclusion.
 The inciting incident in an essay encourages you to get to the point early on in the essay.
 The equivalent of character development in the second act is developing your argument.
 The equivalent of the supporting characters is the evidence you refer to in your essay.

The tornado is the inciting incident in the Wizard of Oz – so to take the analogy a little further, the longer you leave your
essay before you get to the point, the longer you leave your reader standing around in dull black-and-white Kansas, waiting
for something to happen.
So, applying the three-act structure to an essay gives you something like this:

1. Set-up – the introduction. This establishes what you’re talking about, setting the scene. The ‘inciting
incident’ could be the introduction of evidence that contradicts a common theory, or the highlighting
of a central disagreement in how something is interpreted.
2. Confrontation – you discuss the different problems surrounding the topic you’re writing about. You
develop the argument using various bits of evidence, moving towards an overall conclusion.
3. Resolution – the conclusion. You summarise and resolve the argument with your own opinion, by
coming down on one side or the other, having weighed up the evidence you’ve discussed. You could
perhaps tie up loose ends by offering an alternative explanation for evidence that doesn’t sit with
your conclusion.
Using this structure keeps you focused on the central point, and stops you from waffling, because
everything you write is working towards resolving your argument. The use of the inciting incident in
the first ‘act’ encourages you to get to the point early on in your essay, thereby keeping the reader
interested. The principles of good plot-writing are centred around the connection between different
events that show cause and effect, and this central tenet of the three-act structure has obvious
parallels with the way in which essays work through presenting evidence in support of arguments.

3. An attention-grabbing opening
 A murder mystery novel might start with the murder and then establish the build-up in flashbacks.
An oft-spouted piece of advice in creative writing is to use an attention-grabbing opening. One way
of doing this is to start with a ‘flashback’, which could disrupt the chronology of events by
transporting the reader directly back to the midst of the action, so that the story begins with
maximum excitement. In a murder mystery, for instance, the writer might skip a slow build-up and
instead use the murder itself to form the opening of the novel, with the rest of the story charting the
efforts of the detective to uncover the perpetrator and perhaps telling the events prior to the murder
in a series of flashbacks. The same principle can be applied to essays, though it’s easier to use in
some subjects than others.

To take an example, let’s say you were writing about how the First World War started. Rather than
building up slowly with the various factors, an attention-grabbing opening could (briefly) describe the
drama of the Battle of the Somme, perhaps citing some statistics about the number of men involved
and killed, and quoting some war poetry about the horrors faced by the soldiers on the Front Line.
Then, to introduce the purpose of the essay and launch into your argument about what started the
war, a phrase such as, “It seems hard to imagine that all this began with…”. Alternatively, a
rhetorical question: “But how did these tens of thousands of soldiers end up in the mud and horror of
trench warfare? The story begins several years earlier, with…” It may not be the standard way of
writing an essay, but you’ll certainly score points for originality and perhaps ruffle a few feathers.
4. Extended metaphors

Metaphor is used extensively in Romeo and Juliet. Film still from Romeo and Juliet (F. Zefferelli, 1968).
Creative writing often makes use of extended metaphors. For example, when Shakespeare wrote
the passage in Romeo and Juliet referring to “It is the East, and Juliet is the sun!” he was using an
extended metaphor. With this in mind, it’s time to revisit a point we made in a previous article
about writing more original essays, in which we argued that, rather than battling on with trying to
explain a complex concept in a straightforward way, it might be easier to use an analogy to convey
the meaning by drawing comparisons, which people find easier to understand. A metaphor is a kind
of analogy, so the similarities with creative writing are strong here. In our previous article we used
the example of radioactive decay. An analogy for this is the pressure with which water escapes from
a hole in a bucket. It does so exponentially, just as radioactive substances decay exponentially. In
both instances, the rate of a consumptive process depends on how much there is left of whatever is
being depleted, which results in an exponential rate of decay. This concept is so much easier to
explain using the analogy of water flowing from a hole in a bucket, as you give your reader
something familiar to visualise in order to explain a concept with which they are unfamiliar.
5. Interesting details about setting and location

Augustus lived frugally.

Another way of keeping your reader interested is to bring your essay to life with details about setting
and location, just as creative writers do. Essays can become quite dry if you focus solely on the
academic problems, but you can make them more interesting by peppering them with details. This
may not work quite so well for a scientific essay, but it’s certainly relevant for some humanities
subjects, in particular English literature, history and archaeology. For example, an essay about the
Roman emperor Augustus could mention that he lived a famously modest lifestyle, quoting details
from Roman writers and archaeological evidence that support this: Suetonius mentions his “low bed”
(interesting because of what it says about accepted standards of Roman beds!) and coarse bread
and cheese diet, and the relatively small and non-lavish remains of his house on the Palatine Hill in
Rome back up the idea of his having lived a modest life.

Incidental details like these can actually prove to be more significant than you initially realise, and
you can use them to build your argument; in the case of Augustus, for example, his modest lifestyle
is particularly important when seen in the context of Rome’s troubled history with kings. As he
gradually acquired more power and became Rome’s first emperor, he had to avoid coming across as
being too ‘regal’, and the little details we know about his way of life are significant in light of this. So,
not only have you brought your essay to life, but you’ve raised an interesting point, too.

6. Editing
Few writers get it right first time. Once you’ve written a first draft, read through it and think about
whether the order of your points is optimal and whether what you’ve written actually makes sense.
It’s easy in the age of computers to chop and change – you can simply copy and paste part of your
essay into another part where it might fit better, and then make minor changes to your wording so
that it flows. After you’ve finished editing, have a final read through and check that you’re happy with
the wording. Don’t forget to proofread to ensure that your spelling and grammar is impeccable!
7. And finally… record your ideas

Keeping a notebook to hand helps you gather good ideas when they come to you.
Creative writers swear by having a notebook with them at all times, ready to jot down any ideas that
suddenly spring to mind. You can adopt the same principle for your essay-writing, because you
never know when the inspiration might strike. Have a think about your essay topic when you’re out
and about; you’d be surprised what occurs to you when you’re away from your normal place of
study.

As you can see, there are more similarities between two apparently unrelated kinds of writing than
you might have realised. It is, of course, possible to go too far with the creative writing idea when
you’re essay-writing: literary devices aren’t always appropriate, and your essay still needs to retain
objectivity and conform to the more formal conventions of academic writing. But there are certainly
techniques to be borrowed from creative writing that will help your essays stand out from the crowd
and give your teacher or lecturer a welcome break from the monotony of essay-marking.

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6 Definite Ways to Improve Your Creative Writing Skill

Creative writing as a skill needs constant practice to make one better and better as only practice
makes perfect. There are a number of ways that one can use to achieve that perfection. Enumerated
below are just a few ways to improve creative writing skill;

 Keep writing

Sometimes writers think they only need to write when they feel the urge to write. Well, the best of
writers tend to disagree with that. The only way a creative writer can improve their skill is by
constantly writing, no matter how much they feel they are out of content to write about. The
motivation should be ever present to push one to want to keep writing. So keep the ink moving till
the pen runs dry.

 Establish a writing routine and reading schedule

Creating a constant writing habit is better than waiting to put together long hours of writing.
Dedicating a couple of minutes a day to read and write slowly creates a reading and writing habit.
Good writers have dedicated hours for their work, be it in the middle of the night or at crack of dawn,
whichever works for you.

 Learn the trade

It is necessary to equip oneself with the skills of editing, correct grammar, styles of creating stories,
proper formatting and all that entails to writing a good piece or article. Having the story is not
enough. A good writer needs to learn the proper means of bringing the best out of their writing. It is
therefore necessary to learn and understand the small details that many tend to ignore as unnecessary.

 Share your work

The only way a writer is going to learn their strengths and weaknesses from his/her reader is by
sharing his/her work. It is important that as a creative writer or artist, your work gets out there for
critique. A creative writer should also be open to positive and negative criticism and pick the best
way to improve and correct on their work.

 Be disciplined

Discipline is a very critical tool in improving the skills of creative writing. Self-discipline is most
important. A writer should stick to their itinerary, finish all his/her projects and keep to his/her plans.
Nothing comes out of lack of self-discipline especially for a creative artist. As the saying goes, “Only
the disciplined are truly free”.

 Be flexible

Some writers tend to agonize and feel bitter over their stories or pieces not going as to plan. The
beauty of creative writing is that sometimes, even the authors have no idea how their stories end.
George R.R. Martin, the author of the famous book series “Song of Ice and Fire” adopted for the
television series “Game of Thrones” admits that even he has no idea how the story finally ends. So
writers should not have a fixed mind-set on their work. It is necessary to let the story flow instead of
forcing it to a conclusion they had envisioned for their writing. This helps the writer be more
spontaneous and intriguing to their readers and their fans.

If these steps are followed then any writer out there should see an improvement in their writing.
Issues such as writers block come about as a result of lack of practice and lacking flexibility.
Adopting a more open minded approach helps boost and improve creative skills especially in writing.